By Professor Doom
It seems every
month or so there’s another “breathtaking breakthrough” in cancer research,
with a miracle cure just around the corner. As a cancer survivor, I pay
attention to such things, because nothing predisposes someone to cancer more than
having already had cancer…one of those breakthrough treatments might be used on
me, after all.
Thing is, I was
“cured” by a treatment protocol nearly identical to what I would have had 30
years ago…none of these amazing new breakthroughs ever seem to pan out despite
the good press and published research. Seeing as I’ll probably need one of
those breakthroughs, it worries me greatly that so many promising researchers with
promising results end up with nothing in the end. What’s up here?
Psychology as a
research field was in the news some time back, because the bulk of the studies,
even “landmark” studies by famous researchers, with results that supposedly
changed fundamental ideas in psychology, cannot be
replicated. Further poking around revealed some fraud, but most of the
issues were dismissed—psychology is a “soft” science, after all.
It’s not
just psychology, though, at long last we’re finally looking at our intensely
bureaucratic peer review system and realizing that something has gone horribly,
horribly wrong. There’s been far too much trust placed in a system with no
oversight, and much like checks for cheating in a college classroom often
reveal a majority of fake students, we’re starting to see it’s about the same
in “research.”
But cancer
research is different, right? I mean, it can literally be a matter of life and
death here…surely when we look for fraud here it won’t be so bad, right?
Alas, no:
Before going
further, I need to explain why “peer review” is valued. I suspect the gentle
reader has been led to believe the reason is because a paper reviewed by peers
is a better paper, as other scholars have looked at the results and research
methods and determined them to be valid. It has long been presented as the gold
standard of scientific research.
Rubbish.
The gentle reader
has been misled. The reason why peer review is “the way” for academics is
because administrators with no education themselves took over education. Since these guys know nothing, they decided
“peer review” could take the place of having actual scholars working with
scholars. The only way to advance, even survive, in higher ed as a researcher
is to successfully publish peer reviewed research, as administrators
have no capacity to understand scientific research, even on a rudimentary level (note:
this link discusses what actually goes on in 8000 level research courses in
Administration doctoral programs).
But
administrators with no education still get to decide if the research is worthy.
Since they know nothing, it’s a simple matter to set up a fake peer review
system every bit as corrupt as the (extensive) cheating systems many of our
students use…no admin could figure this out.
While
administrators don’t have the acumen to detect fraud, journals are starting to
double check the system, instead of relying on good faith. The results have
been dismal:
The journal
Tumor Biology is retracting 107 research papers after discovering that the authors faked the peer review process. This
isn’t the journal’s first rodeo. Late last year, 58 papers were retracted from seven different journals— 25 came from Tumor Biology for the same reason.
How do these
journals get fake reviewers? Well, they asked the researcher to suggest a
reviewer. This is not unreasonable, research topics can be pretty arcane, and
you can’t just ask a random stranger to analyze a paper on variations within
the DNA of the red-toed Hungarian centipede and expect him to know exactly what
to expect.
So, the researcher
provides fake contact information, and possibly a fake name (or even the name
of a real person, but the e-mail address is for someone else). The scheme is
good, but eventually the journal caught on, because the peer reviewers behaved
suspiciously:
“When a lot
of the fake peer reviews first came up, one of the reasons the editors spotted
them was that the reviewers responded on time,”
Reviewing a paper
sucks—it’s a completely thankless unpaid job (when scholars were in control of
education, there was gratitude for scholarly work like this, but now, admin
doesn’t respect it because there’s no benefit to admin), and if you’re going to
do it right, it’s going to take time. So, “real” reviewers generally have to be
harassed into doing it at all, much less on time.
So, the fake
reviewers were suspicious, because they acted like spending a great deal of
time on a thankless, unpaid, job was really fun and interesting work. Now, the
journal intends to weed out these fake reviewers, but this really is just the
barest of tips of how bad the fraud goes…once you’re willing to accept the
reality of how higher education works today, how desperate our generally
untenured researchers are to get published, and how a higher education system
that is jammed with fraud and corruption at doesn’t motivate an academic researcher
at the bottom to be particularly honest in dealing with it. I mean, if admin
lies and takes advantage of you nearly every day, how much sleep will you lose
about lying and taking advantage of admin’s ignorance?
They found some
completely fake reviewers for papers they were about to publish, and that’s
nice. What of papers published in previous years? Comparably garbage, one could
reasonably suspect.
Moving forward,
even if we get rid of completely fake reviewers, what’s to prevent collusion?
“I promise to review your research paper and approve it if you promise to
review my paper and approve it” is not a difficult arrangement to make,
especially with a colleague just as desperate as you are, with massive student
loans to pay off, no job security, and needing to publish right away.
That’s just at
the researcher level, what about at the editor level? Editors at different
journals can decide to swip/swap fake papers. The gentle reader should know
that many papers are, after publication, read by a dozen people or less. I’m
really not joking how goofy the system is; a colleague who I worked with at a
minor institution started to game the system at maximum level, publishing well
over 100 papers a year, year after year, using methods I’ve only touched on.
He’s in the ivy
league now, earning bank and still gaming the system with a ridiculous,
positively ridiculous, number of
papers published each year. You’d think an administrator would ask “how is this
guy publishing 6 months’ worth of research every 2 weeks?” but admin gets
credit for being at an institution with many publications, so isn’t about to
ask an obvious question like that…the answer might cut into his bonus. This
stuff is so out of control for the same reason we have community college
campuses with 40% or more fake students on them, students that never come to
class, but nevertheless get those loan checks and increase the enrollment
numbers. Admin just wants numbers, and doesn’t care how to get them.
I completely
understand how the reader might think this is just some colossal joke amongst
the pointy-headed academics, and, considering how much of it would be worthless
even if legitimate, I can see the reader’s point. Seriously, thousands of
papers on Shakespeare are published every year, and it’s obvious that none of
those papers are life-changing, or will influence humanity in any way (but you
gotta get those things published if you want to keep your job…). In science,
particularly medical science, it’s rather important for the papers to be
legitimate.
While I grant that
most of this gigantic systematic fraud can be ignored safely enough…someone
(me, for example) might need one of those papers to be legitimate at some point.
www.professorconfess.blogspot.com
No comments:
Post a Comment